Latest News from the Feejees - 8

In his talk yesterday at the Morgan Homecoming, Fred Calabretta of Mystic Seaport mentioned that Ron Howard is completing a film of In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick's retelling of the the sinking of whaleship Essex ("#1 Best Seller in Ship History" on Amazon). This has been public knowledge for a couple of years, but it was news to this blog.

imdb.com has a page with all the info. The U.S. release date is 13 March 2015. With direction by Ron Howard, it's sure to be a polished production that will put the posteriors in the seats, as they say. Will this high-profile film attract a crush of folks to MDM20 in January, 2016? I'm sure the wheels of preparation are in motion at the Whaling Museum.

Slightly related: A film version of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is scheduled for release in 2015/16. The Appalachian Long-Distance Hiker's Association is already discussing ways to aid/educate the clueless hordes that will hit the trail in the years following.

Latest News from the Feejees - 7

Director Lynne Ramsay talks about her work-in-progress, Moby Dick in Space. Enjoy.

Hat-tip: Iron-Bound Bucket.

Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012

The exhilarating film culture of the sixties and seventies would have been much less so without the informed insights of Andrew Sarris, who died yesterday. His column in the Village Voice was the reason I subscribed. (If I recall correctly, his review of a Woody Allen movie bore the headline: "What more do you want, and who else is even trying?") Scan the titles in this compilation of over forty years of Sarris Top Ten lists and dream of a time when movies mattered.

His influential survey, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, mentioned John Huston's film of Moby-Dick, unflatteringly, in the chapter Less Than Meets the Eye:

The turning point in Huston's career was probably Moby Dick. In retrospect, he should have acted Ahab himself and let Orson Welles direct. This was his one gamble with greatness, and he lost, and like the cagey poker player he is, he has been playing it cool and corrupt ever since.

Just reporting, not agreeing; although the idea of a Welles-directed M-D is such stuff as dreams are made on.

Latest News from the Feejees - 5

Ah, the joys of squandered time! I just stumbled on the end of the 1958 revenge-oater, Terror in a Texas Town. My on-screen guide summary mentioned oil and a man with a harpoon, then I saw Sterling Hayden hefting a harpoon the way Alan Ladd caressed his six-shooter in Shane, so I un-muted the TV.

The bad guy's hired gun is intimidating the locals so he can get their land (and oil). Sterling Hayden plays a retired Swedish whaleman or something, who has a particular affection for his own harpoon. Yadda, yadda, yadda. There's a climactic showdown in the dusty street.

The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, while he was blacklisted, so it may be better than I'm making it sound. You can buy the DVD from Amazon ($3.98 new!), or just enjoy the incredible (the only apt word) finale here...

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements - 3

For the film-fans among us, here's another interesting article in Cinefantastique: "Sons of Moby Dick: Melville’s White Whale has spawned a school of sea monsters." Author Steve Biodrowski discusses films that deal with scary things that come out of the ocean, including Godzilla, Jaws, Anaconda, and both the Gregory Peck and Patrick Stewart versions of our beloved tome.

Marathon Cinema

Over at Iron-bound Bucket, the captain has posted an assortment of marathon-related videos -- from New Bedford and elsewhere -- for your viewing pleasure.  Among the offerings is "The Moby Dick in All of Us," an artsy take on the 2010 New Bedford Moby-Dick Marathon by one Stephanie Cardon.  The film is about 10 minutes long, with music but no narration or ambient sound.  (You may want to provide your own music if you don't care for serialism; Phillip Sainton's soundtrack for the 1956 Moby Dick might be a good substitute.) 

As I recall, Ms. Cardon is a native of France, now outwardly Americanized.  She and her video camera popped up throughout the 2010 marathon, and during breaks in filming, she took a few turns at the podium to read Moby-Dick in French.

Moby-Dick and Alien

The 1979 sci-fi film Alien was supposedly pitched to producers as "Jaws in space."  But in some ways it resembles Moby-Dick more than Jaws. 

Both Moby-Dick and Alien take place almost entirely aboard a commercial ship.  The Pequod is a whaler; the Nostromo a merchant vessel.  We enter into the shipboard lives of working crewmen -- people for whom sailing or space travel is just a job.  As their routine trip continues, however, both sets of crewmen discover that they have unwittingly signed up for something other than their jobs.  The men of the Pequod learn that they're serving their captain's plan of revenge, while the Nostromo's crew discover that they're being used as alien-bait by the military-industrial complex.*  Ultimately, both vessels are destroyed, and all the crewmen die but one, Ishmael and Ripley, who escape alone -- Ishmael on Queequeg's repurposed coffin, Ripley in the Nostromo's shuttle.

There is one enormous difference, of course: Moby-Dick, despite the earnest wishes of Hollywood producers and high-school boys, is really not a man-versus-monster story.  The whale, unlike the alien, belongs in our world.  Melville goes out of his way to impress upon us the plausibility of his narrative; we must not view it as "a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory" (Ch. XLV, "The Affidavit").  More importantly, if we believe anyone other than perhaps Ahab, Moby Dick is not out to get the humans.  The alien, on the other hand, will kill the humans if they don't kill it first.

That difference accounts in part for Moby-Dick's greater complexity, even in its stripped-down film version.  The questions Melville asks are not as simple as how to kill before being killed.  Does malice lie behind the forces of nature?  Should we blame Ahab for what happens to the Pequod and its crew?  Do men deserve punishment for daring to be proud?  Should we accept as fact that we are all slaves?  "Who ain't a slave?"  (Ch. I, "Loomings")

*Interestingly, the industrial-individual conflict is reversed in the two stories.  Ahab dies because he has deviated from the business purpose of his cruise, whereas Ripley survives by defying the business purpose laid out for her.  Indeed, one of the movie's most memorable scenes is when the Nostromo's crew destroys upper management's representative on the ship (an android, which would not be killed by the alien and would therefore "survive" to pilot the ship home).  This may say something about differences in how business was viewed in the late 20th century as opposed to the mid-19th.

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Put down your teacup and swallow before you read further.

A new film, Age of the Dragons, is to be released in the UK on March 4. Here's the synopsis:

Set in a medieval realm where Captain Ahab and crew hunt dragons for the vitriol that powers their world, Ishmael, a charismatic harpooner joins their quest. Ahab's adopted daughter Rachel, beautiful and tough, runs the hunting vessel. Ahab's obsession is to seek revenge on a great "White Dragon" that slaughtered his family when he was young and left his body scarred and mauled, drives the crew deeper into the heart of darkness. In the White Dragon's lair Ahab's secrets are revealed and Rachel must choose between following him on his dark quest or escaping to a new life with Ishmael.

Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee!

Ray Bradbury interview

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Was Ray Bradbury a mercenary philistine with no appreciation for his literary source? Read Steve Biodrowski's 2008 interview in the magazine Cinefantastique, "Ray Bradbury on Adapting Melville’s Allegorical Sea Monster, Moby Dick."
Mr. Bradbury, who turns 91 in August, discusses his work with director John Huston to adapt our beloved book to a 2-hour film. In true Melvillian fashion, the story is not without its ambiguities and exigencies.
We note also that the hymn we sing in the Seamen's Bethel as part of the MDM, The Ribs and Terrors of the Whale, was composed by Philip Sainton as part of his soundtrack for the Huston/Bradbury film. (HT: blog-fellow Lemuel.)
Think back -- was it this movie that led you to reading Moby-Dick?

Latest News from the Feejees

Another film version of Moby-Dick was shot in Nova Scotia and Malta in 2009, with William Hurt as Ahab, Gillian Anderson as Ahab's wife ("Elizabeth"), Ethan Hawke as Starbuck, one of those Hobbit dudes, etc.

The local newspaper in Nova Scotia has extensive coverage. It is reported to be a 4-hour TV mini-series. No mention of an air-date.

Why "Ahab Beckons" (Gansevoort's view)

[See Lemuel's previous post on this topic.]

As Patti Smith told an interviewer who asked why she wore those strange clothes, "It looks cool."

As Lemuel suggests, confusion over the phrase "Ahab beckons," invented for a not-aimed-at-the-literati Gregory Peck period-revenge thriller (viewable online), shows how much a part of our culture Melville's original work has become. (Although I was shocked last month to find that my friend's college-junior daughter had never heard of the book or the movie. "What's Moby Dick?" A teachable moment, I guess.) Should we view Ray Bradbury's script as a mashup? (Doesn't that term sound quaint?)

Nor should we bookish types be smug. The prow-shaped pulpit in the Seamen's Bethel to which we troop for the reading of the "Father Mapple" chapters was only installed in 1961, in response to visitors' expectations after having seen the movie. (When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.)

Me, I'm a fatalist who loves a jolly memento mori.

Remember me as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so you will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.

And I love the complete quote from the movie: Ahab beckons. He's dead but he beckons. It calls to mind a favorite phrase from Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable: ...the ancient dead and the dead yet unborn...

But why say more? Ahab beckons each of us readers. Even Ishmael's story had its end.

Speaking of Beckett, here's another bit from The Unnamable that could have been in the mind of any of the Pequod's crew (as it was often in the mind of a certain corporate wage-slave, also on a rather long lay):

I, who might that be? The galley-man, bound for the Pillars of Hercules, who drops his sweep under cover of night and crawls between the thwarts, towards the rising sun, unseen by the guard, praying for storm.

Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye...

Why "Ahab Beckons"?

As any Melville aficionado can tell you, the phrase "Ahab beckons" appears nowhere in Moby-Dick.  It's one of Ray Bradbury's inspirations, added to the story when he wrote the screenplay for John Huston's 1956 Moby-Dick.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

In the 1956 film, the line "Ahab beckons" is spoken by Stubb (Harry Andrews), during the final chase of Moby Dick.  Prior to this line, Ahab is knocked from his whaleboat, grabs the ropes streaming from Moby Dick to pull himself onto the whale's back, stabs the whale with a dangling harpoon while shouting two phrases taken verbatim from the book ("from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee"), and then becomes entangled in the ropes and drowns while bound to the whale's body.  The three mates then see Moby Dick swim by, with Ahab's corpse plastered to his side, Ahab's dead arm flopping back and forth as the whale rolls.  Hence, Ahab "beckons" to the sailors to follow him.

This makes for memorable cinema, but it bears little resemblance to what happens in the book.  In the book, Fedallah (whom Bradbury excised in writing his version) is the one whose corpse the sailors (and Ahab) see lashed to Moby Dick's side.  And there is no beckoning, even by Fedallah.  His fate is instead tied by Ahab to a prophecy Fedallah had made ("Aye, Parsee! I see thee again," Ahab says. "Aye, and thou goest before; and this, THIS then is the hearse that thou didst promise.").   What Bradbury apparently did was take bits of the Fedallah storyline and work it into his streamlined version, adding the visual touch of Ahab's waving arm. 

Admittedly, an entirely faithful filming of Ahab's death would be quite underwhelming, since Ahab is jerked from this world in the blink of an eye ("voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone"). 

END OF SPOILERS

So why would we title a blog devoted to the annual New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon with a movie line that has no analogue in the book itself?  Gansevoort came up with the idea; I can't speak for his thinking.  For myself, among other reasons, I think it reflects the gap between text and audience.  Moby-Dick, more than other classics, demonstrates that a literary creation does not come with its own readership.  Rather, it's at the mercy of the world it's launched into.  Moby-Dick found a publisher, luckily, on the strength of Melville's earlier works, but it nearly sank like a stone on its first appearance.  Some 50 years later, it was discovered and finally appreciated.  It now remains a living classic, with real, non-academic readers, thanks partly to movies, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and the museum's marathon.